To distribute N categories across M columns as evenly as possible, assuming N >= M, observe that

  1. (N mod M) columns will contain ((N div M) + 1) categories
  2. the remaining (M - (N mod M)) columns, if any, will contain (N div M) categories.

Given this, categories can be distributed in one pass.

Update: Oh blast. I may have misread the problem, and confused the "height of the table in rows" with "the aggregate height summed from the @height data".

In reply to Re: Puzzle: need a more general algorithm by dws
in thread Puzzle: need a more general algorithm by Ovid

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